Puritans

The Puritans were English Calvinist Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to "purify" the Church of England from its Catholic practices. Following King Henry VIII of England's Act of Supremacy, which outlawed the Catholic Church in England, the Church of England became the only legal church in the country. Protestant doctrines, however, held no attraction to Henry, whose views on religious belief and practice were still orthodox Catholic views. Many English people insisted on a genuine reformation of the church, and they sought to eliminate Catholic features from the Church of England. Under Queen Elizabeth I, England established itself as a Protestant nation due to its survival against Spanish attempts to invade the British Isles, and its people accepted Protestantism as their faith.

When King James I of England acceded to the throne in 1603, Puritans petitioned for further reform of the Church of England. King James authorized a new translation of the Bible into Old English, but both King James and his son King Charles I enforced the establishment of the Church of England and persecuted dissenters. In 1629, King Charles dissolved Parliament, where Puritans were well-represented, and initiated aggressive anti-Puritan policies. Some Puritans left for Europe or the Caribbean, but most of them headed for the Americas. One of the first groups to emigrate, the separatist Pilgrims (who sought to leave the Church), moved to Holland in 1608 and then to the New World in 1620, establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony. During the 1630s, the Puritans allied themselves with the growing commercial world, parliamentary opposition to the royal prerogative, and Scottish Presbyterians. They came to power as the result of the English Civil War, and almost all Puritan clergy left England after the restoration of the House of Stuart in 1660 and the 1662 Uniformity Act. Many continued to practice their faith in the Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches, and the Puritan faith in New England remained strong until the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when its hegemony was shattered by the rise of dissenting Baptists, Quakers, Anglicans, and Presbyterians. By 1740, the Puritan era was over.